John said, “I do want to go on helping people.”
“Make a clean break and resume elsewhere. It’s another plus you have no family.”
“That’s necessary?”
“Better yet,” he said, “just leave New York. Thus far in it’s all at state level. We’re not talking San Cristobal. We’re talking New Jersey. We’re not even talking Canada.”
“That I don’t need.”
“Our backup could take the form of a defense fund and legal help.”
“What do you advise?”
“The Immigration and Naturalization Service. To revoke your citizenship.”
“Explain.”
“Worst case: the Justice Department makes an application to the INS.”
The Reverend paused. “God forbid,” he said, and touched his cruciform tiepin with a buxom fingertip. For a moment, again, he looked sad and powerful. The sadness, perhaps, of the intercessor or shaman who, though in close and constant touch with the spirit world of angels and demons, is often oppressed by the thought of his own talent-lessness—when set against their virtues and glamours, their hoodoos, their evil eyes.
“The only present danger,” Kreditor resumed, “is if the press pick up on it like they did with that poor, poor lady in Queens.”
John waited. He was staring at the twin beds. Then, both quickly and suddenly, he turned to the Reverend— who was now holding before him a photograph, of which he allowed us only the briefest glimpse. Thank Christ. This photograph, this swipe of grain, so briefly glimpsed: I could tell it contained extraordinary information. It was black and white. It was about power. Twelve men were depicted there, in unmistakable configuration. Twelve men, but two distinct human types, equally represented, six of one type, half a dozen of the other. The first type had power, and safety in numbers. The second type had no power—had numbers, but no safety: numbers conferred only grief and weakness. The first type was silently saying something to the second type. Six men were saying to the other six: Whatever else divides us, whatever else is between us, only one thing matters. We belong to the living, you to the dead. We are the living and you are the dead. The dead.
“So. All they have is this, which is thirty years old, and two so-called witnesses.”
“Nothing,” said John.
“What, nothing?”
“I had no criminal record.”
“The usual catch: did you lie about your criminal record?”
“Ah.”
“It’s taking the form of inquiries about your U.S. naturalization.”
“Go on.”
“There’s some heat,” said Kreditor.
And I wondered if he meant the heat that was all over John’s body. Now John looked away shyly and said, “My mother …”
Kreditor seemed interested. “That’s a plus for us.”
“My first language.”
“Hey, that’s right, I remember. You’re the one with no accent.”
The two men stood up and shook hands. John said, “I’m going to tell you the truth. Yesterday was better.”
“Sir, how are you today?”
“Reverend.”
“Doctor.”
John and I returned to our new home, but it was difficult, at first, to take any pleasure in the place (the vast skylight, for example), John’s state being what it was. It would have been nice to be able to keep out of his way. A woman, someone like Irene, I know, would have found him horrible to be near. So you can imagine what he was like to be inside. Then the Reverend called, with his news about the weather turning stormy, and I thought he was the last person we needed to hear from. But after that, well, it was all sea breezes. The afternoon passed in happy loneliness, TV, newspaper, the inspection of various little perplexities: waste disposer, toenail, shirt button, light bulb. Consciousness isn’t intolerable. It is beautiful: the eternal creation and dissolution of mental forms. Peace … As noon approached John adopted a behavior pattern that I knew well: stretching, scratching, complacently sighing. It meant that he was about to go to work.
I could only watch as he changed. The short-sleeved bib, the white smock. I looked for the black boots. No. Just the white clogs. What hope from them? John was purged now, and fully awake to the world.
As he walked the five blocks no one tried to stop him. The heavens didn’t weep above his head, nor did the fat-cheeked clouds assume sneers of calamity. Likewise the ground, the concrete, which did not cleave to devour or entomb him. And the wind ditto, smoothing past in sweet-zephyr form, no devil-breath, no hurricano. I could adduce only the hopeless weeping of a child, the terrified stare of a black bum on Thirteenth and Seventh, and the way all the walkers, city-users, the tragedians of the street—the way they all seemed to be fleeing, and the uniformed ones (those that are responsible) saying, Don’t mind us. We just wreck buildings or We just start fires or We just scar highways or We just spread trash. Here is the building, with doormen, porters, receptionists, wheeling caterers, hurrying stretcher-bearers, who know who we are. Dr. Young. For we, we, we!—we demolish the human body.